Early Garden Progress

We are getting closer to the time when we can plant warm-weather crops here in central Ohio, but we aren't there yet. I was at a local nursery today and wondered how many of the people buying tomato plants were going to be planting them today or very soon. It's always a disaster when they try, more cold is coming sometime between now and the 2nd week of May.

However, I am going to experiment with some early tomatoes, using my Wall-O-Water plastic protectors. I started last year at the beginning of May using them, and they worked great. Now I want to push it up a week and try planting here now during the 4th week of May. I have heard people starting a lot earlier than this using the WOW's but I want to ease my way into it, and experiment with 4 Better Boy plants. I should be planting those tomorrow, and will report on their progress.

As I said in a previous post, I planted some early crops as early as March 10th. I also posted a picture of the spot, though it was bare. So here is the same spot as of yesterday, April 23rd:

From 2009 Garden

Left to right are spinach (Bloomsdale) looseleaf lettuce (Salad Bowl), bibb and romaine lettuce, and radishes. The romaine is from seeds I kept from last year, something I want to do more with other vegetables.


And nearby here are the peas (Sugar Snaps):

From 2009 Garden

So things are growing, thriving so far in the garden. The target date that I set months ago for that first salad is May 1, that might be a bit overambitious. However, the weather forecast shows that it is going to be quite warm between now and then, so we will see.